Our Brain On God
“Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain–particularly the frontal lobes and anterior cingulate-where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is “filled with aggression and fear.” It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not.” Michael Gershon, reviewing Andrew Newberg …
The Science Of Shame
I’ve come to believe that the human condition is very simple. A friend of mine sent me the following video, which is now at the top of all the videos I’ve ever seen on humanity. It’s that good and that important. If you have 20 minutes to spend today on anything, make it this video. Brené Brown shares the science …
Emotional Change
I’m a huge proponent of experience. I’m a thinker but I’m learning that the stuff that produces consistent changes in my life are the experiences that gives me tangible emotional content. Turns out science is confirming this reality. I was reading the Heart Math Institutes understanding of the heart and its role in cognitive functions. Turns out change happens better …
Buddhism’s Commitment To Reality
What do you do when the story you’ve been told no longer jibes with your understanding of reality? One of the central tensions I ran into while writing Discovering The God Imagination, was the confrontation with the traditional stories that informed my understanding of the Gospel. I had reached a point where I could no long live with the “traditional” …
Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity Part 2
This is the second part in a series of posts that explore my subtitle, Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity. Part 1 explores the word “New” —————————————————————————————- So why did I choose the word “Reconstructing” in my title. Over the last five or six years I’ve been exploring the concept of Emergence. I’ve written extensively on it …
Hard Wired For Connection
What if philosophers got it wrong? What if the basic notion that we are hard-wired for narcissism and self-interest is not as true our our forefathers adamantly ascribed? I’m deep into The Empathic Civilization, a profound work of human understanding. Jeremy Rifkin suggests that science is now calling into question just about all of our pre-existing notions of human enlightenment …
An Empathic Civilization
Prepare to geek out for about 10 minutes. ;-P This is a video by author Jeremy Rifkin and explores the idea of empathy. He makes the assertion, based on neuroscience that we are soft-wired with something called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons allow us to construct a sense of empathy by recreating in our own brain what we see someone else …
The Chaos Of The Mind
I think neuroscience is going to play a huge part in reshaping our understanding of what it means to be human. One of the central arguments I make in Discovering the God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity is where we locate the problem. Historically we’ve cast the problem outward onto Satan or God. I make the argument that the …
Admitting Our Limitations
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Marilynne Robinson www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party This is a very interesting video of Jon Stewart interviewing Marilynne Robinson. She explores the tension between science and religion and suggests that scientists are not being honest about their own science. For the sake of good …
The Math of Love
The following post is directly cut from Andrew Sullivan. I found it remarkably interesting but I don’t know if it accurately represents love. In some ways it seems like pragmatism. What do you think? ——————————————————————————————– A Spanish mathematician crunches the numbers on successful relationships: The results of the mathematical analysis showed when both members of union are similar emotionally they …
